1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:18,000 It's been over 75 years since the United States Night Fighter Squadron observed the so-called 2 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:23,440 Foo Fighters high over the Franco-German border during World War II. 3 00:00:23,440 --> 00:00:29,320 But the fact is that it was just a prelude to the UFO phenomenon, the start of which 4 00:00:29,320 --> 00:00:34,760 coincided with the most deadly period in human history. 5 00:00:34,760 --> 00:00:39,880 The Second World War in Europe ended in May 1945, but it was to be several months later 6 00:00:39,880 --> 00:00:44,840 before the most horrific conflict in human history reached a conclusion. 7 00:00:44,840 --> 00:00:50,080 In August the U.S. military dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima 8 00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:53,480 and Nagasaki. 9 00:00:53,480 --> 00:00:58,520 The Soviets tested their first atomic bomb on the steps in what is now Kazakhstan on 10 00:00:58,520 --> 00:01:06,920 August 29, 1949, triggering the onset of the tense 40-year nuclear standoff between Russia 11 00:01:06,920 --> 00:01:09,120 and the United States. 12 00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:14,040 The Cold War. 13 00:01:14,040 --> 00:01:19,000 At some point, perhaps when this problem with the Soviet Union was resolved and we got on 14 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:22,040 the same page and was like, oh, okay, great. 15 00:01:22,040 --> 00:01:25,400 You're communists, we're capitalists, but that's fine. 16 00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:26,840 You help win the war. 17 00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:27,940 Let's work together. 18 00:01:27,940 --> 00:01:31,180 That didn't happen. 19 00:01:31,180 --> 00:01:37,860 What happened was trillions and trillions of modern dollars were spent on building 70,000 20 00:01:37,860 --> 00:01:43,300 nuclear warheads, then nuclear submarines, putting them on tracks, putting them on launch 21 00:01:43,300 --> 00:01:48,380 pads, putting them on underwater so that they could, you could be dead 12 seconds after the 22 00:01:48,380 --> 00:01:52,500 war began. 23 00:01:52,660 --> 00:01:56,500 We'd be on the verge of another deadly conflict. 24 00:01:56,500 --> 00:02:01,900 These series of nuclear tests were preceded by astonishing events, events that raised 25 00:02:01,900 --> 00:02:06,780 a completely different kind of concern and helped precipitate the creation of many top 26 00:02:06,780 --> 00:02:11,180 secret projects, projects which have remained top secret until now. 27 00:02:22,500 --> 00:02:49,180 Top secret UFO projects. 28 00:02:49,180 --> 00:02:50,740 Declassified. 29 00:02:50,740 --> 00:02:54,460 Private Blue Book, unknown. 30 00:02:54,460 --> 00:03:01,620 June, 1947, in the skies above Washington State, close to Mount Rainier. 31 00:03:01,620 --> 00:03:07,620 Private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported citing a formation of unidentified flying crafts. 32 00:03:07,620 --> 00:03:12,340 Arnold's account led to the press quickly coining the terms, flying saucer and flying 33 00:03:12,340 --> 00:03:19,460 disc as popular descriptions for unidentified flying objects. 34 00:03:19,460 --> 00:03:24,340 One month later, the most notorious UFO sighting in history occurred. 35 00:03:24,340 --> 00:03:32,260 July, 1947, Roswell, New Mexico. 36 00:03:32,260 --> 00:03:39,180 Major Jesse A. Marcel, Air Force Intelligence Officer, arrived home to his house in Roswell. 37 00:03:39,180 --> 00:03:44,540 He walked into his 10-year-old son's bedroom and woke him up, saying that he would probably 38 00:03:44,540 --> 00:03:48,340 never again see what he was about to show him. 39 00:03:48,340 --> 00:03:53,180 Times recovered from inside a UFO. 40 00:03:53,180 --> 00:04:01,860 There was a lot of rather thick foil-like material, kind of a, not a shiny aluminum, 41 00:04:01,860 --> 00:04:07,020 but a burnished or a slate-gray type of aluminum metal. 42 00:04:07,020 --> 00:04:11,460 There was a black plastic type debris, like bake-like, which was shattered. 43 00:04:11,460 --> 00:04:12,980 It was very brittle. 44 00:04:12,980 --> 00:04:19,140 Perhaps at its core, what, why it has really resonated throughout the years, is that it 45 00:04:19,140 --> 00:04:23,540 was the first time, and perhaps only time, where the United States Air Force, and maybe 46 00:04:23,540 --> 00:04:28,580 it was still called Army Air Force at the time, authorized a newspaper article that said, 47 00:04:28,580 --> 00:04:30,620 we have captured a flying saucer. 48 00:04:30,620 --> 00:04:34,620 In Washington, that newspaper report created turmoil. 49 00:04:34,620 --> 00:04:38,020 And say that you're the president of the United States, you're Harry Truman. 50 00:04:38,020 --> 00:04:39,540 What do you do with that information? 51 00:04:40,540 --> 00:04:44,900 If you tell the world that it's real, first of all, you don't know are they hostile or 52 00:04:44,900 --> 00:04:45,900 friendly. 53 00:04:45,900 --> 00:04:52,340 Basically, it's, if informally, the moment that Truman sent the authorization to Roger 54 00:04:52,340 --> 00:04:58,660 Ramey, then in Dallas, Fort Worth, that press release out of the Roswell Air Force base, 55 00:04:58,660 --> 00:05:02,140 that has got to be reversed immediately. 56 00:05:02,140 --> 00:05:06,940 Because if the press get to Roswell in time to start interviewing people all over town, 57 00:05:06,940 --> 00:05:08,580 this is out. 58 00:05:08,620 --> 00:05:10,340 This is done. 59 00:05:10,340 --> 00:05:14,620 The White House ordered a complete lockdown of all information and personnel connected 60 00:05:14,620 --> 00:05:16,620 with the Roswell incident. 61 00:05:16,620 --> 00:05:21,140 Major Jesse Marcell was ordered to return to base immediately. 62 00:05:21,140 --> 00:05:26,060 The information about the crash of an extraterrestrial vessel that had been prematurely released 63 00:05:26,060 --> 00:05:29,180 to the public had to be played down. 64 00:05:29,180 --> 00:05:33,860 The UFO Genie had to be put back at the bottle at all costs. 65 00:05:38,580 --> 00:05:42,860 The very same day they hold the late press conference, later in the day they get Jesse 66 00:05:42,860 --> 00:05:44,820 Marcell Sr. back there. 67 00:05:44,820 --> 00:05:50,020 They get him in a room to hold up some Reynolds wrap that might have been wrapping Roger Ramey's 68 00:05:50,020 --> 00:05:55,300 fish in the freezer and say, weather balloon, it was just a weather balloon. 69 00:05:55,300 --> 00:05:59,180 And the press goes, oh, oh, okay, right, no problem. 70 00:05:59,180 --> 00:06:03,700 They debunked the whole thing and said, oops, it was a mistake, we just saw a balloon. 71 00:06:03,700 --> 00:06:05,060 And it was completely forgotten. 72 00:06:05,500 --> 00:06:09,740 I think initially they might have thought it was even a Russian weapon or something. 73 00:06:09,740 --> 00:06:12,380 That was the reason for it. 74 00:06:12,380 --> 00:06:20,460 The very same story, but later, it was not a Russian weapon. 75 00:06:20,460 --> 00:06:22,260 So that left one out of possibility. 76 00:06:22,260 --> 00:06:24,260 Something from out of our atmosphere. 77 00:06:35,060 --> 00:06:39,700 And then the next day, we had a new scenario that we're going to have laser ships destroying 78 00:06:39,700 --> 00:06:40,700 society. 79 00:06:40,700 --> 00:06:47,700 That means the Air Force has failed in creating this sense of safety amongst the populace. 80 00:06:47,700 --> 00:06:52,740 Given the circumstances of the time, it's not surprising that an initiative emerged 81 00:06:52,740 --> 00:06:58,900 within the Pentagon to establish a program to investigate the UFO phenomenon. 82 00:06:58,900 --> 00:07:04,100 The foundations were laid for the creation of the longest and most wide spanning government 83 00:07:04,820 --> 00:07:07,380 Project Blue Book. 84 00:07:07,380 --> 00:07:12,420 Project Blue Book was run by the United States Air Force. 85 00:07:12,420 --> 00:07:20,540 And it was the best known of the three UFO research and investigation programs that the 86 00:07:20,540 --> 00:07:23,780 US government had had in the early days. 87 00:07:23,780 --> 00:07:31,820 Starting in 1947 with Project Sine and then evolving into Project Grudge. 88 00:07:31,860 --> 00:07:40,180 Project Blue Book was, I think, a genuine attempt to investigate UFO sightings and come 89 00:07:40,180 --> 00:07:44,420 to some sort of assessment of the phenomenon. 90 00:07:44,420 --> 00:07:49,340 They really needed to get as much information as they could from private citizens who saw 91 00:07:49,340 --> 00:07:55,580 the craft, who could report if the craft had landed, who was inside of the craft, whether 92 00:07:55,580 --> 00:07:58,660 people were being taken inside of the craft and being shown things. 93 00:07:58,660 --> 00:08:03,220 So all of this information they needed and the best way for them to get it was to have 94 00:08:03,220 --> 00:08:09,620 this Project Blue Book set up so that it could act as a kind of veneer for people to report 95 00:08:09,620 --> 00:08:11,780 UFO sightings. 96 00:08:11,780 --> 00:08:15,860 Project Sine was sort of like this high water mark of, hey, there's something going on. 97 00:08:15,860 --> 00:08:17,660 No, there's not. 98 00:08:17,660 --> 00:08:19,140 We've got a grudge against this. 99 00:08:19,140 --> 00:08:20,140 There's nothing going on. 100 00:08:20,140 --> 00:08:24,100 And then that was disbanded and led to the creation of Project Blue Book. 101 00:08:24,100 --> 00:08:29,220 The newly formed team is about to face a truly spectacular warm-up round with an incident 102 00:08:29,220 --> 00:08:36,060 directly above the nation's capital, observed by countless numbers of people. 103 00:08:36,060 --> 00:08:41,980 I do believe, probably, the most significant case in Blue Book was 1952. 104 00:08:41,980 --> 00:08:46,660 Because we have a case here, a lot of people say, I'm not going to believe in UFOs unless 105 00:08:46,660 --> 00:08:50,420 they land on the lawn in Washington, D.C. 106 00:08:50,420 --> 00:08:51,700 Well, they practically did. 107 00:08:51,700 --> 00:08:52,700 They buzzed. 108 00:08:52,700 --> 00:08:53,700 They flew over. 109 00:08:53,700 --> 00:09:10,260 July, 1952, Washington, D.C. 110 00:09:10,260 --> 00:09:14,260 We'll bring you the dramatic story of what happened over our nation's capital just one 111 00:09:14,260 --> 00:09:15,460 week ago tonight. 112 00:09:15,460 --> 00:09:21,020 Air traffic controller Edward Nugent noticed seven unidentified flying objects on his radar 113 00:09:21,020 --> 00:09:24,340 screen outside of authorized airspace. 114 00:09:24,340 --> 00:09:27,460 He reported them to his superior. 115 00:09:27,460 --> 00:09:32,100 It was also confirmed by two other controllers. 116 00:09:32,100 --> 00:09:38,900 At nearby Andrews Air Force Base, Airman William Brady also reported sightings of objects resembling 117 00:09:38,900 --> 00:09:45,740 fireballs whose speed and maneuverability were unlike anything he'd ever seen. 118 00:09:45,740 --> 00:09:46,740 He asked him to describe it. 119 00:09:46,740 --> 00:09:47,740 He said he couldn't describe it. 120 00:09:47,740 --> 00:09:51,540 It was just a small white light. 121 00:09:51,540 --> 00:09:52,540 So did S.C. 122 00:09:52,540 --> 00:10:02,340 Peerman, a pilot waiting for takeoff clearance at Washington National. 123 00:10:02,340 --> 00:10:08,540 Inexplicably, Project Blue Book Commander Edward J. Ruppelt was only made aware of this 124 00:10:08,540 --> 00:10:12,500 incident much later. 125 00:10:12,500 --> 00:10:16,900 The unknown object passed over the White House and the Capitol Building. 126 00:10:16,900 --> 00:10:39,300 F-94 Starfire jet fighters were scrambled from Andrews, but the objects vanish. 127 00:10:39,300 --> 00:10:44,620 A week later, the incident occurred again, with the same unidentified craft appearing 128 00:10:44,620 --> 00:10:47,460 in the skies above the Capitol. 129 00:10:47,460 --> 00:10:52,200 Project Blue Book spokesman Albert M. Chalk denied reporters requests to photograph the 130 00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:59,500 radar screens. 131 00:10:59,500 --> 00:11:04,260 During this second incident, Lieutenant William Patterson locked onto one of the objects, 132 00:11:04,260 --> 00:11:06,020 attempting to pursue it. 133 00:11:06,020 --> 00:11:08,100 His efforts were futile. 134 00:11:08,100 --> 00:11:10,380 That was far too fast. 135 00:11:10,380 --> 00:11:15,620 The unknown objects tracked on the radar were moving at unbelievable speeds, ranging from 136 00:11:15,620 --> 00:11:24,300 1150 to over 7,000 miles per hour. 137 00:11:24,300 --> 00:11:29,180 Project Blue Book investigators were ready, and when this started happening again, they 138 00:11:29,180 --> 00:11:35,620 went to the National Airport, they took over the control panel, they took over the control 139 00:11:35,620 --> 00:11:39,980 tower, and they witnessed this UFO encounter themselves. 140 00:11:39,980 --> 00:11:45,780 They saw the jets being scrambled, they saw the radars, they were right there at the time, 141 00:11:45,780 --> 00:11:50,700 and they weren't able to determine what it was. 142 00:11:50,700 --> 00:11:58,780 It's an amazing episode of history that a president who was very calm and controlled 143 00:11:58,780 --> 00:12:06,180 like Truman, who's not prone to flights of fancy or, you know, panicking, got angry enough 144 00:12:06,180 --> 00:12:09,460 about the situation, he actually called the director of Project Blue Book, and he said, 145 00:12:09,460 --> 00:12:10,980 what the hell is going on? 146 00:12:10,980 --> 00:12:17,300 And he scrambled fighter jets to shoot these things down. 147 00:12:17,300 --> 00:12:20,940 Was these jet fighters were chasing and that were outrunning them? 148 00:12:20,940 --> 00:12:26,220 A very similar incident to what we see in the Nimitz that's making the news right now, 149 00:12:26,220 --> 00:12:28,980 or the Roosevelt, which is also making news. 150 00:12:28,980 --> 00:12:33,980 So it's a repeat of what keeps happening, where these things show up, we chase them, 151 00:12:33,980 --> 00:12:41,060 they outmaneuver our best technology, and we have no idea what the heck they are. 152 00:12:41,060 --> 00:12:45,700 The country was in the midst of a cold war and people feared global conflict. 153 00:12:45,700 --> 00:12:50,300 When unknown craft flew in formation over the nation's capital, something had to be 154 00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:51,420 done. 155 00:12:51,420 --> 00:12:58,900 On July 29, 1952, an extraordinary press conference was held at the Pentagon. 156 00:12:58,900 --> 00:13:04,900 The largest press conference since World War II was held at the Pentagon, and Major General 157 00:13:04,900 --> 00:13:12,940 John Alexander Samford spoke to the public along with other military officers about the 158 00:13:12,940 --> 00:13:14,700 sightings. 159 00:13:14,700 --> 00:13:21,660 We can say that the recent sightings are in no way connected with any secret development 160 00:13:21,660 --> 00:13:25,780 by any agency of the United States. 161 00:13:25,780 --> 00:13:32,020 General Samford stated that these things have been seen in the sky, dating back to biblical 162 00:13:32,020 --> 00:13:41,140 times, that there are credible people who are seeing incredible things, that you can't 163 00:13:41,140 --> 00:13:45,060 explain any of this except for phenomena. 164 00:13:45,060 --> 00:13:51,020 However, there have been a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made 165 00:13:51,020 --> 00:13:56,460 by credible observers of relatively incredible things. 166 00:13:56,460 --> 00:14:02,620 It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. 167 00:14:02,620 --> 00:14:07,340 This was perhaps the one and only time in history when the military command of a global 168 00:14:07,340 --> 00:14:12,620 superpower issued a public response to documented UFO sightings and admitted that it was at 169 00:14:12,620 --> 00:14:14,580 a loss to explain them. 170 00:14:14,580 --> 00:14:20,180 It was the first official admission that extraterrestrial graph of superior speed and maneuverability 171 00:14:20,180 --> 00:14:31,020 had been observed in the Earth's atmosphere. 172 00:14:31,020 --> 00:14:36,020 The flights over Washington seem to announce to the world, we are here. 173 00:14:36,020 --> 00:14:38,620 You can count on our involvement. 174 00:14:38,620 --> 00:14:44,340 Nuclear weapons can endanger not only you, but the entire planet and as yet undiscovered 175 00:14:44,340 --> 00:14:48,260 worlds beyond it. 176 00:14:48,260 --> 00:14:52,900 To this day, UFOs are sighted near bases with nuclear arsenals. 177 00:14:52,900 --> 00:14:58,180 And in at least two documented cases, the coded activation system was inexplicably tampered 178 00:14:58,180 --> 00:14:59,180 with. 179 00:14:59,180 --> 00:15:06,300 In 2010, UFO expert Robert Hastings states, declassified US government documents and 180 00:15:06,300 --> 00:15:11,460 witnessed testimony from former or retired US military personnel confirmed beyond any 181 00:15:11,460 --> 00:15:16,260 doubt ongoing UFO incursions close to nuclear weapons facilities. 182 00:15:16,260 --> 00:15:22,100 But information about this is kept under wraps and denied. 183 00:15:22,100 --> 00:15:26,740 And so how do you keep that under wraps? 184 00:15:26,740 --> 00:15:33,540 Well, you use all of the spy craft tool and disinformation tools and stuff that we developed 185 00:15:33,540 --> 00:15:35,660 during the war. 186 00:15:35,660 --> 00:15:38,940 You formalize the CIA out of the OSS. 187 00:15:38,940 --> 00:15:40,980 You create the NSA. 188 00:15:40,980 --> 00:15:42,980 You use your technology. 189 00:15:42,980 --> 00:15:45,020 You get in touch with publishers and key papers. 190 00:15:45,020 --> 00:15:49,500 You talk to the three networks and you say, look, this, you got to play ball with us. 191 00:15:49,500 --> 00:15:50,500 And they did. 192 00:15:50,500 --> 00:15:54,940 Is there anything in the files, either classified or unclassified that would indicate that there 193 00:15:54,940 --> 00:15:59,060 may be extraterrestrial visitors or the head? 194 00:15:59,060 --> 00:16:03,220 First of all, the project is completely unclassified. 195 00:16:03,220 --> 00:16:07,300 And there's nothing in the records that would indicate that we have been visited by any 196 00:16:07,300 --> 00:16:10,300 fan civilization. 197 00:16:10,300 --> 00:16:15,180 Despite the authorities best efforts, these sightings would keep on coming, confounding 198 00:16:15,180 --> 00:16:21,460 attempts to play down the whole notion of UFO phenomena. 199 00:16:21,460 --> 00:16:26,900 One of the cases that really impressed me in Project Blue Book was that in 1952 there 200 00:16:26,900 --> 00:16:34,140 was this sighting of a flying saucer in the vicinity of Desert Springs. 201 00:16:34,140 --> 00:16:40,420 And this was the place where Georgia Damksky says that he actually had his first encounter 202 00:16:40,420 --> 00:16:43,900 with a extraterrestrial from Venus. 203 00:16:43,900 --> 00:16:49,860 And a Damksky had six people that witnessed him having this encounter. 204 00:16:50,340 --> 00:17:02,060 November 1952 Desert Center, California. 205 00:17:02,060 --> 00:17:05,740 Georgia Damksky returns home from stargazing with friends. 206 00:17:05,740 --> 00:17:09,820 He was about to experience an encounter that would change his life. 207 00:17:20,860 --> 00:17:26,860 First, he recalls a cigar-shaped object appearing in the sky. 208 00:17:29,860 --> 00:17:34,860 Others in the group were shocked, but Georgia Damksky was not so easily phased. 209 00:17:34,860 --> 00:17:39,860 He left the group and walks towards where the craft had apparently landed. 210 00:17:40,860 --> 00:17:46,860 Adamsky disappeared over the horizon just as the vessel appeared to land, but from 211 00:17:46,860 --> 00:17:49,860 a distance it is too hard to tell. 212 00:17:49,860 --> 00:17:57,860 Adamsky returned just moments later with an alarming message. 213 00:17:59,860 --> 00:18:06,860 He said that he was warned by a being from Venus called Orthon about the threat of imminent 214 00:18:06,860 --> 00:18:08,860 nuclear war. 215 00:18:08,860 --> 00:18:16,860 He tells them the Venusian communicated with him non-verbally. 216 00:18:20,860 --> 00:18:26,860 I have more or less on gestures and mental therapy as if there's no one taught transfer. 217 00:18:26,860 --> 00:18:27,860 He does not speak. 218 00:18:27,860 --> 00:18:30,860 I mean, he doesn't at the time, but I have made him sense and he does speak very well 219 00:18:30,860 --> 00:18:33,860 English as well as in the other language. 220 00:18:33,860 --> 00:18:35,860 They saw the UFO. 221 00:18:35,860 --> 00:18:40,860 They actually even saw a cigar-shaped craft in the vicinity. 222 00:18:40,860 --> 00:18:46,860 So these witnesses, they gave their testimony to a local newspaper. 223 00:18:46,860 --> 00:18:51,860 They took some soil samples to support what Adamsky said that he had a real-life meeting. 224 00:18:51,860 --> 00:18:54,860 And in the project, Blue Book files, they said, 225 00:18:54,860 --> 00:19:01,860 there was another person independent of Adamsky and his six witnesses who said that they reported 226 00:19:01,860 --> 00:19:07,860 a UFO sighting in the precise area where Adamsky had his encounter. 227 00:19:07,860 --> 00:19:14,860 On December 13, 1952, George Adamsky claims to have photographed a UFO. 228 00:19:14,860 --> 00:19:19,860 The image was depicting a man who was in a car accident. 229 00:19:19,860 --> 00:19:23,860 George Adamsky claims to have photographed a UFO. 230 00:19:23,860 --> 00:19:26,860 The image was debunked and compared to a surgical lamp. 231 00:19:26,860 --> 00:19:30,860 Which of George Adamsky's claims were true? 232 00:19:30,860 --> 00:19:37,860 Project Blue Book Commander Edward J. Ruppelt and his scientific adviser, Joseph Allen Heineck, 233 00:19:37,860 --> 00:19:39,860 took an interest in Adamsky. 234 00:19:39,860 --> 00:19:42,860 In his 1956 memoirs, Ruppelt writes, 235 00:19:42,860 --> 00:19:51,860 To look at the man and to listen to his story, you immediately felt an urge to believe him. 236 00:19:51,860 --> 00:19:55,860 Decades later, it is clear, not only from Ruppelt's memoirs, 237 00:19:55,860 --> 00:19:59,860 but also from the testimony of other direct participants in Project Blue Book, 238 00:19:59,860 --> 00:20:04,860 that the project manipulated facts, especially in its later phase. 239 00:20:04,860 --> 00:20:11,860 Some cases were filed with a blatant effort to avoid any unexplainable or unidentified phenomena. 240 00:20:11,860 --> 00:20:15,860 There was a policy instituted at that time. 241 00:20:15,860 --> 00:20:24,860 In 1953 and in 1954, there were two new Air Force regulations put into effect 242 00:20:24,860 --> 00:20:32,860 that essentially any information that was not explained by the Air Force 243 00:20:32,860 --> 00:20:36,860 was to go through a different process, a different system, 244 00:20:36,860 --> 00:20:43,860 that only the information that could be identified as conventional craft 245 00:20:43,860 --> 00:20:47,860 could be told to the public and to the media. 246 00:20:47,860 --> 00:20:51,860 And the whole idea was to say, we're taking this seriously when they weren't taking it seriously. 247 00:20:51,860 --> 00:20:55,860 They just wanted information, but they would interpret it one way for the public, 248 00:20:55,860 --> 00:21:00,860 they'd interpreted it another way for themselves, because they knew this was real. 249 00:21:00,860 --> 00:21:04,860 And you're a publisher and they come in and say, this is national security. 250 00:21:04,860 --> 00:21:07,860 We cannot have significant investigations of this. 251 00:21:07,860 --> 00:21:11,860 You can write some articles, but do not challenge our position on this. 252 00:21:11,860 --> 00:21:13,860 It's for the benefit of the nation. 253 00:21:13,860 --> 00:21:15,860 And what is the publisher going to do? 254 00:21:15,860 --> 00:21:16,860 Ask Ruppelt. 255 00:21:21,860 --> 00:21:26,860 Project Blue Book's most famous commander was Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 256 00:21:26,860 --> 00:21:33,860 a decorated World War II pilot who incidentally coined the term unidentified flying object. 257 00:21:33,860 --> 00:21:39,860 After resigning from his post, Ruppelt wrote the book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 258 00:21:39,860 --> 00:21:44,860 which to this day provides readers with a very solid picture of what happened behind the scenes 259 00:21:44,860 --> 00:21:51,860 of military investigations into the phenomenon between 1947 and 1955. 260 00:21:56,860 --> 00:22:02,860 Ruppelt and his people were very strongly looking at the extraterrestrial hypothesis. 261 00:22:02,860 --> 00:22:07,860 But in later years, Blue Book was explicitly given orders by the Air Force, by the military, 262 00:22:07,860 --> 00:22:14,860 to explain all of these unexplained cases and just to give them explanations, 263 00:22:14,860 --> 00:22:18,860 whether balloon, hoax or media or whatever. 264 00:22:18,860 --> 00:22:22,860 And they got their percentage of unknowns down very, very low, 265 00:22:22,860 --> 00:22:25,860 but that doesn't mean that these were legitimate investigations. 266 00:22:25,860 --> 00:22:31,860 The most significant civilian figure associated with Project Blue Book was Joseph Allen Heineck, 267 00:22:31,860 --> 00:22:37,860 a scientist hired by the Pentagon to advise on three consecutive UFO studies. 268 00:22:37,860 --> 00:22:41,860 Project Sine, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. 269 00:22:41,860 --> 00:22:47,860 Heineck's observations became a case study of how empirical findings on the UFO question 270 00:22:47,860 --> 00:22:50,860 brought about radical change of opinion. 271 00:22:50,860 --> 00:22:55,860 If you put it in the word, use the word possibility and not probability, 272 00:22:55,860 --> 00:23:01,860 then I would have to say I think if any scientist were allowed to say it is certainly possible, yes. 273 00:23:01,860 --> 00:23:07,860 So my father got involved with Project Blue Book and the predecessors. 274 00:23:07,860 --> 00:23:09,860 There are two theories. 275 00:23:09,860 --> 00:23:15,860 One is that because of his classified work with the Air Force or the Army during World War II 276 00:23:15,860 --> 00:23:18,860 and the proximity fuse, he had a security clearance. 277 00:23:18,860 --> 00:23:24,860 And there are people, and you can see websites where they say it was a CIA plan to get Heineck involved again. 278 00:23:24,860 --> 00:23:31,860 The alternative view is that they just needed a respectable astronomer to come in and say, 279 00:23:31,860 --> 00:23:34,860 don't worry folks, there's nothing going on. 280 00:23:34,860 --> 00:23:39,860 Among the tremendous noise or static or crud or whatever you want to call it, 281 00:23:39,860 --> 00:23:44,860 a tremendous number of unreliable reports that I easily explain, 282 00:23:44,860 --> 00:23:52,860 there is this residue of most interesting cases that intrigued me in the same way that a good mystery story intrigued me. 283 00:23:52,860 --> 00:23:54,860 And I'd like to get the solution. 284 00:23:54,860 --> 00:23:56,860 Now we knew J. Ellen Heineck quite well. 285 00:23:56,860 --> 00:24:01,860 We were with him both privately and at public conferences in the 70s and 80s. 286 00:24:01,860 --> 00:24:08,860 And he was a man who was paid literally by the Project Blue Book to cover up the extraterrestials. 287 00:24:08,860 --> 00:24:12,860 But he was a man who had an inquisitive mind. 288 00:24:12,860 --> 00:24:18,860 He starts looking behind the scenes and spitting out there's something real going on here. 289 00:24:18,860 --> 00:24:22,860 What it is, we don't know, but it's worthy of study. 290 00:24:22,860 --> 00:24:25,860 Big, big cases which they never gave to Heineck. 291 00:24:25,860 --> 00:24:29,860 So that's when Heineck discovered that they were using him. 292 00:24:29,860 --> 00:24:38,860 Project Blue Book was basically an attempt to put under the table this phenomenon to discredit it. 293 00:24:38,860 --> 00:24:41,860 We have not been hiding anything. 294 00:24:41,860 --> 00:24:44,860 The investigations have been made public. 295 00:24:44,860 --> 00:24:50,860 The explanations of those where there is a clear explanation have been made public. 296 00:24:50,860 --> 00:24:52,860 The hearing this morning was public for just that reason. 297 00:24:52,860 --> 00:24:56,860 Then later on in his life, he totally switched. 298 00:24:56,860 --> 00:25:01,860 He understood that the phenomenon was both physical and psychic. 299 00:25:01,860 --> 00:25:04,860 So it was both physical and paranormal. 300 00:25:04,860 --> 00:25:15,860 What was initially surprising for my father was the sort of cavalier attitude that the Air Force had to not really learn the truth. 301 00:25:15,860 --> 00:25:22,860 Whether or not they need to learn the truth for a different military point of view than my father's scientific inquiry, 302 00:25:22,860 --> 00:25:25,860 but they just weren't interested in the truth. 303 00:25:25,860 --> 00:25:36,860 But what the U.S. military couldn't control were reports of sightings of UFOs coming from outside the United States. 304 00:25:36,860 --> 00:25:40,860 June 1959. 305 00:25:40,860 --> 00:25:45,860 Gwanae Papaunukini. 306 00:25:46,860 --> 00:25:56,860 The peace and quiet of the Boe and I Anglican mission was unexpectedly disrupted. 307 00:25:56,860 --> 00:26:04,860 Reverend William Booth Gill was the first to observe intense light around unoccupied Mount Pudi. 308 00:26:04,860 --> 00:26:08,860 He and his assistant thought it was an atmospheric phenomenon, 309 00:26:08,860 --> 00:26:14,860 hardly realizing that they would soon witness something much more extraordinary. 310 00:26:14,860 --> 00:26:19,860 On June 26, Father Gill, along with 38 other eyewitnesses, 311 00:26:19,860 --> 00:26:26,860 saw a large disc in the sky emitting blue light he later went public with what he had seen. 312 00:26:26,860 --> 00:26:34,860 What it's like to look up in the sky and see a totally foreign looking object. 313 00:26:34,860 --> 00:26:43,860 They're just hovering, not very far high up, maybe 200, 300 feet up in the air. 314 00:26:43,860 --> 00:26:48,860 Observers saw what appeared to be beings inside the craft. 315 00:26:48,860 --> 00:26:57,860 They looked like people, but something told Father Gill he was witnessing an encounter of an entirely different kind. 316 00:26:57,860 --> 00:27:04,860 The visitation was repeated again the following night and was observed by yet another 25 witnesses. 317 00:27:04,860 --> 00:27:12,860 Figures walking about on top and not the slightest noise whatsoever. 318 00:27:12,860 --> 00:27:17,860 And so we waved. They waved back. 319 00:27:17,860 --> 00:27:24,860 Was it possible? Did these beings come from another world or from a parallel universe? 320 00:27:24,860 --> 00:27:28,860 How did it have such an event been witnessed by so many? 321 00:27:28,860 --> 00:27:35,860 The question is no longer whether there is intelligent life in the universe, but how many different forms might it take? 322 00:27:35,860 --> 00:27:39,860 And then suddenly it did go. 323 00:27:39,860 --> 00:27:50,860 And there was this amazingly incredible speed that the whole craft disappeared to nothing. 324 00:27:50,860 --> 00:27:55,860 And then Father Gill came to our house for dinner one night for an ecumenical religious conference. 325 00:27:55,860 --> 00:28:00,860 And this was not a guy who went on the UFO lecture circuit. He did not write a book. 326 00:28:00,860 --> 00:28:05,860 He was a man in his 70s who was very comfortable in his own skin, as we say. 327 00:28:05,860 --> 00:28:10,860 And I saw him with my own eyes. And I'm looking at him thinking, I don't think this guy is lying. 328 00:28:10,860 --> 00:28:17,860 I don't think this guy is crazy. So he didn't really understand why they didn't want to just thoroughly investigate. 329 00:28:17,860 --> 00:28:19,860 And they didn't know they would do something very different than he would do. 330 00:28:19,860 --> 00:28:24,860 So I think that was surprising to him. 331 00:28:24,860 --> 00:28:30,860 In the 1950s, at the behest of the CIA, the Robertson panel was established. 332 00:28:30,860 --> 00:28:37,860 The scientific committee that precisely shaped strategies and tactics of dealing with the media. 333 00:28:37,860 --> 00:28:46,860 Even if UFOs did not pose a direct threat to the United States, a threat could arise from the mismanagement of classified information and public interest. 334 00:28:46,860 --> 00:28:51,860 Therefore, a massive disinformation plan was created and put into action, 335 00:28:51,860 --> 00:28:56,860 gradually integrating their talking points into public life. 336 00:29:01,860 --> 00:29:05,860 The Air Force always wanted to get rid of Project Blue Book. 337 00:29:05,860 --> 00:29:13,860 They weren't really able to without a proper pretext, a proper explanation, reason. 338 00:29:13,860 --> 00:29:18,860 That's where the so-called Condon Committee investigation came in. 339 00:29:18,860 --> 00:29:27,860 In the late 1960s, the University of Colorado was contracted by the Air Force to do a supposedly scientific study of UFOs. 340 00:29:27,860 --> 00:29:31,860 Well, that was a whole rigged game as well. 341 00:29:31,860 --> 00:29:36,860 Dr. Edward Condon made statements such as, 342 00:29:36,860 --> 00:29:48,860 we do not expect extraterrestrial life from outside our solar system to reach our planet in the next 10,000 years. 343 00:29:48,860 --> 00:29:55,860 If you actually look at the Condon Project reports, the scientific study, 344 00:29:55,860 --> 00:30:05,860 you'll find that much of that information indicates that UFOs are real and that there was a serious interest in this. 345 00:30:05,860 --> 00:30:10,860 Sort of signal low points would be 1953 and 1969. 346 00:30:10,860 --> 00:30:22,860 1953 was the Robertson panel, which is the first of sort of two scientist-led symposiums to discuss UFOs and write a report and come up with a conclusion. 347 00:30:22,860 --> 00:30:33,860 Basically, they had a report whose conclusion said, there's nothing to the UFO phenomena. Let's close the doors and go home. 348 00:30:33,860 --> 00:30:41,860 The fact that the contents of the program remained classified until 1975, five years after Project Blue Book was terminated, 349 00:30:41,860 --> 00:30:47,860 demonstrates without a doubt that the Robertson panel report wasn't just a temporary program. 350 00:30:47,860 --> 00:30:57,860 It was a sustained, long-term effort to make the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable. 351 00:30:57,860 --> 00:31:11,860 Pinex saw this essentially as a smoke screen to keep critical information about UFOs out of the public domain. 352 00:31:11,860 --> 00:31:20,860 Project Blue Book was officially shut down in 1969, with the archive made available to the public in 2015. 353 00:31:20,860 --> 00:31:24,860 As it turns out, the archive is far from complete. 354 00:31:24,860 --> 00:31:32,860 Following a discovery by UFO investigator Rob Mercer, who lived close to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, 355 00:31:32,860 --> 00:31:40,860 many previously undisclosed cases recorded by the U.S. military and collated by Project Blue Book came to light. 356 00:31:40,860 --> 00:31:48,860 Thanks to a classified advertisement, offering official military files related to UFOs, Mercer took possession of a cache of boxes. 357 00:31:48,860 --> 00:31:54,860 These boxes were filled with documents stored in a garage by a former military base officer. 358 00:31:54,860 --> 00:32:04,860 Thanks in large part to Mercer, a much clearer picture of the history of the project and the sheer volume of information in its possession came to light. 359 00:32:04,860 --> 00:32:11,860 April 1964, Socorro, New Mexico 360 00:32:18,860 --> 00:32:30,860 It was hot at the end of April that year, especially for patrolman Lonnie Zamora at around 5.45 in the afternoon while in pursuit of a speeding driver. 361 00:32:35,860 --> 00:32:42,860 He witnesses a flash of fire on the horizon about a half a mile away. 362 00:32:42,860 --> 00:32:50,860 Suspecting that a dynamite store in the area exploded, he decided to drop the pursuit in order to check out the scene. 363 00:32:50,860 --> 00:32:56,860 I went up that little road for about half a mile again. 364 00:32:57,860 --> 00:33:03,860 Came up to this little parking deal there on the side of an old knife. 365 00:33:03,860 --> 00:33:13,860 For a glance out the window, slept in my slab, something with white objects on the ground. 366 00:33:13,860 --> 00:33:18,860 Saw a part of my deer, caught it, turned over. 367 00:33:18,860 --> 00:33:25,860 Saw a river, a real big harrow going out there to investigate, thought maybe somebody would be hurt. 368 00:33:25,860 --> 00:33:31,860 Astonished, the objects spotted by Zamora slowly began to rise into the air. 369 00:33:31,860 --> 00:33:36,860 There was no smoke, just a blue and orange flame beneath the object. 370 00:33:36,860 --> 00:33:47,860 Frightened, the policeman fled, stumbling, losing his glasses as he fell on the dusty ground, he tries to take cover in anticipation of an explosion above him. 371 00:33:47,860 --> 00:33:50,860 Suddenly, everything went quiet. 372 00:33:50,860 --> 00:34:01,860 He looked up to see the object slowly departing, but not through rocket propulsion, simply floating silently away. 373 00:34:01,860 --> 00:34:08,860 Jay Hynek met with Lonnie Zamora to discuss what he had seen and evaluate his credibility. 374 00:34:08,860 --> 00:34:12,860 He was favorably impressed. 375 00:34:12,860 --> 00:34:23,860 My father thought he was a very credible witness who exhibited signs of trauma immediately after the event and was very consistent in his recounting of the event after that. 376 00:34:23,860 --> 00:34:30,860 And this is sort of part of a flurry or a flap of cases in New Mexico in the 40s, 50s and 60s. 377 00:34:30,860 --> 00:34:39,860 So that was a very convincing case. That was one of the cases that led my father to finally jump in with both feet to the deep end of the UFO pool. 378 00:34:39,860 --> 00:34:47,860 Testimonies gathered over the years refute perhaps the most important official conclusion of Project Blue Book, which states, 379 00:34:47,860 --> 00:35:02,860 there has been no evidence submitted or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as unidentified represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge. 380 00:35:02,860 --> 00:35:10,860 There has been no evidence indicating the sightings categorized as unidentified are extraterrestrial vehicles. 381 00:35:10,860 --> 00:35:20,860 You know, when you investigate cases and they're obviously extraterrestrial, at some point you just have to say, this is not able to be covered up any longer. 382 00:35:20,860 --> 00:35:28,860 This is why Project Blue Book was diminished because it did not have answers that were sufficient really to other areas of science. 383 00:35:28,860 --> 00:35:40,860 The largest study ever done by the U.S. Air Force was done in 1954, 1955 at the prestigious Battelle Memorial Institute. 384 00:35:40,860 --> 00:35:49,860 3,201 cases were categorized by the scientists who did this study. 385 00:35:49,860 --> 00:35:58,860 In the end, 21.5% were labeled as true unknowns. 386 00:35:58,860 --> 00:36:04,860 They could not identify them as anything conventional on this planet. 387 00:36:04,860 --> 00:36:10,860 However, the Secretary of the Air Force made a statement that it was only 3%. 388 00:36:10,860 --> 00:36:14,860 When you say that it's only 3%, it can be easily dismissed. 389 00:36:14,860 --> 00:36:20,860 21.5% deserves further scientific investigation. 390 00:36:20,860 --> 00:36:29,860 By the time Project Blue Book was terminated in 1969, it had accumulated a total of 12,618 UFO sightings, 391 00:36:29,860 --> 00:36:33,860 categorizing the majority of the cases as natural phenomena. 392 00:36:33,860 --> 00:36:35,860 Anomalies are conventional aircraft. 393 00:36:35,860 --> 00:36:42,860 Roughly 6% of the cases, 701 to be exact, are labeled as unexplainable. 394 00:36:42,860 --> 00:36:48,860 One of the most intriguing of these was reported just three years before Blue Book was shut down. 395 00:36:48,860 --> 00:36:53,860 March 1966, Shepard Air Force Base, Texas. 396 00:37:00,860 --> 00:37:14,860 Shortly before sunrise, 56-year-old electrician Eddie Laxen was driving over the state line between Texas and Oklahoma, little suspecting what he was about to encounter. 397 00:37:14,860 --> 00:37:26,860 The beams of a car's headlights on this dark road, there wasn't a living soul in sight, and yet, a moment later Eddie sharply had to stop on his brakes. 398 00:37:26,860 --> 00:37:32,860 Dumbfounded, he stared ahead while the car radio suddenly died. 399 00:37:32,860 --> 00:37:34,860 As did the vehicle's engine. 400 00:37:34,860 --> 00:37:42,860 He got out of his car and stood transfixed at a 75-foot-long, 8-foot-high, and 12-foot-wide craft. 401 00:37:42,860 --> 00:37:47,860 It was unlike anything he had ever seen. 402 00:37:47,860 --> 00:37:48,860 Here's his dimensions. 403 00:37:48,860 --> 00:37:50,860 It's 75 feet in length. 404 00:37:50,860 --> 00:37:53,860 It has a 3-foot diameter porthole here. 405 00:37:53,860 --> 00:37:55,860 It has a bubble canopy here. 406 00:37:55,860 --> 00:37:59,860 There's four landing gear legs, and then there's a door right here. 407 00:37:59,860 --> 00:38:05,860 There were figures standing alongside the vessel, dressed in uniforms bearing unfamiliar emblems. 408 00:38:05,860 --> 00:38:12,860 The ship, as he recalled, was marked with the numbers TL-4768. 409 00:38:12,860 --> 00:38:17,860 The vessel had no wings, as you might see on a conventional man-made aircraft of the period. 410 00:38:17,860 --> 00:38:22,860 There was a man shining a flashlight on the bottom of this craft with a porthole here, 411 00:38:22,860 --> 00:38:29,860 and when he saw that he was being viewed by the eyewitness, he went up the ladder, he closed the door. 412 00:38:31,860 --> 00:38:38,860 Shortly after, it rose noiselessly and vanishes at a speed of perhaps 700 miles per hour, 413 00:38:38,860 --> 00:38:43,860 faster than the speed of sound, but without a sonic boom. 414 00:38:43,860 --> 00:38:47,860 Eddie was at a complete loss to explain what he had just seen. 415 00:38:47,860 --> 00:38:52,860 Were these humanoid extraterrestrials, time travelers? 416 00:38:52,860 --> 00:38:58,860 Even with today's technologies, human science is incapable of building such a vessel. 417 00:38:58,860 --> 00:39:05,860 And, as this thing was departing, truckers who were going down the same road, they saw it too. 418 00:39:05,860 --> 00:39:09,860 So we've got multiple independent confirmation of this craft actually being seen. 419 00:39:09,860 --> 00:39:13,860 Shepherd Air Force Base, back in 1966. 420 00:39:13,860 --> 00:39:20,860 And yet, despite the weight of evidence, Project Blue Book filed a way discompelling eyewitness testimony, 421 00:39:20,860 --> 00:39:24,860 continuing its policy of suppressing any accounts of UFO sightings, 422 00:39:24,860 --> 00:39:31,860 or information which might contradict the official government line on the existence of UFOs. 423 00:39:31,860 --> 00:39:37,860 To explain away all UFO sightings as quickly as possible when they become public, 424 00:39:38,860 --> 00:39:41,860 I do not have it. UFOs really exist. 425 00:39:41,860 --> 00:39:46,860 This theory that Project Blue Book was just a public relations exercise 426 00:39:46,860 --> 00:39:53,860 has been given some new credibility, because of course we now know that the Pentagon 427 00:39:53,860 --> 00:40:00,860 had, at least from 2007 to 2012, but maybe still existing, 428 00:40:00,860 --> 00:40:06,860 a program called ATIP, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. 429 00:40:06,860 --> 00:40:14,860 So the idea of having a public program like Blue Book, but having as well a secret program 430 00:40:14,860 --> 00:40:21,860 that the people, the media and the public don't know about, does now have more credibility. 431 00:40:21,860 --> 00:40:28,860 The stigma was manufactured. We as scientists were used in this divide and conquer tactic 432 00:40:28,860 --> 00:40:33,860 that we were meant to come out and get people not to be talking about this 433 00:40:33,860 --> 00:40:36,860 or dismiss any sort of encounter that somebody had. 434 00:40:36,860 --> 00:40:40,860 What are you doing there, Mo? Displaying sources. 435 00:40:40,860 --> 00:40:45,860 And what we see today, the stigma that still exists and the separation between the UFO community 436 00:40:45,860 --> 00:40:50,860 and the scientific community, is a hangover of this period. 437 00:40:50,860 --> 00:40:56,860 It's a legacy of this divide and conquer strategy that was used by the military and the government 438 00:40:56,860 --> 00:41:00,860 in the 1940s, 50s and throughout, and that's not conspiracy theory. 439 00:41:00,860 --> 00:41:06,860 When you keep encountering these objects that are over sensitive airspace that are not supposed to be there, 440 00:41:06,860 --> 00:41:11,860 you have to do something about it. And the thing is they try to do it as quietly as they can, 441 00:41:11,860 --> 00:41:16,860 but this has never stopped being a problem for the United States military. 442 00:41:16,860 --> 00:41:21,860 Although the results of many years of observation have been downplayed and censored, 443 00:41:21,860 --> 00:41:26,860 with UFOs having been successfully relegated to the sphere of pop culture, 444 00:41:26,860 --> 00:41:30,860 this doesn't mean that the U.S. military has lost interest in the phenomenon 445 00:41:30,860 --> 00:41:39,860 or has stopped being active in monitoring any activity which could be associated with UFOs. 446 00:41:39,860 --> 00:41:46,860 It put the United States government in a very difficult position because for years they had said 447 00:41:46,860 --> 00:41:51,860 in response to any questions about this, we don't investigate UFOs anymore. 448 00:41:51,860 --> 00:41:57,860 We haven't done this since Project Blue Book, so of course this story proved that they had. 449 00:41:57,860 --> 00:41:59,860 So it was embarrassing. 450 00:41:59,860 --> 00:42:05,860 The philosophical drive of Project Blue Book was that UFOs did not exist. 451 00:42:05,860 --> 00:42:11,860 So they're always looking for explanations like a weather balloon, the planet Saturn, 452 00:42:11,860 --> 00:42:14,860 or a hoax to explain them away. 453 00:42:14,860 --> 00:42:19,860 I don't think it is based on people, although I would be delighted if it turned out that way. 454 00:42:19,860 --> 00:42:23,860 Because as an astronomer, I think it would make astronomy even more interesting than it is. 455 00:42:23,860 --> 00:42:27,860 And as far as the Air Force is concerned, I can't speak for them, of course, 456 00:42:27,860 --> 00:42:34,860 but I should imagine that if the existence of spacecraft were really established, 457 00:42:34,860 --> 00:42:37,860 it would really increase the appropriations of the Air Force. 458 00:42:37,860 --> 00:42:40,860 Project Blue Book was sort of the front man out there saying, 459 00:42:40,860 --> 00:42:43,860 hey, don't worry, nothing going on here, don't look behind the curtain. 460 00:42:43,860 --> 00:42:48,860 They've been researching whatever they can research about the extraterrestrial presence, 461 00:42:48,860 --> 00:42:54,860 particularly the technology, 24-7, month after month, year after year, 462 00:42:54,860 --> 00:42:56,860 all the way back into the 50s. 463 00:42:56,860 --> 00:43:01,860 And so this idea that, oh, they just did Blue Book and then they didn't do anything, 464 00:43:01,860 --> 00:43:07,860 and then they came up with the ATIP program, believe me, they've been studying it all this time. 465 00:43:07,860 --> 00:43:11,860 The idea that we have to classify and keep things secret and safe. 466 00:43:11,860 --> 00:43:17,860 And you know, we don't have the same level of existential threat we used to have. 467 00:43:17,860 --> 00:43:18,860 We don't. 468 00:43:18,860 --> 00:43:24,860 It's time to move on and say, look, I'd rather have some of these secrets get out 469 00:43:24,860 --> 00:43:33,860 and have a more open world, a lot stronger understanding than what we currently have.